Best April Fools' Pranks 2016

The Best Pranks Of April Fools' Day 2016

It's April Fools' Day and the internet is a veritable minefield of deception. Every year the battle between brands trying to one-up each other with sneaky stunts gets more and more heated. Last year, Google turned Google Maps into a virtual worldwide Pac-Man level; Coors Light starting selling beer in bags; Samsung introduced a razor-thin phone that doubled as a chef's knife; and CERN researchers confirmed the existence of "The Force."

This year is shaping up to be a good one as well with a Ghostbusters-themed prank from Sony; a tasty makeover for Pornhub and two complete misfires from Google.

Check out some of the best corporate pranks from today below, and if you're looking to get in on the pranking game yourself, NASA engineer and YouTube star Mark Rober had some April Fools' ideas that he shared on Jimmy Kimmel Live yesterday.

Sony's Proton Pack

With the Ghostbusters reboot on the way, Sony is making our slime-catching dreams come true with a high-tech proton pack. Based on their press release, the product has been in development for "over 30 years" and is the first of its kind designed to "capture content from a parallel dimension." Check out the video below and read the full specs here.

Gmail's Mic-Drop Feature

Gmail

Usually a master prankster, the joke's on Google this year. Late last night, it revealed a new "mic drop" send button, which when pressed, sent a GIF of a minion dropping a mic and then made any new messages in the thread invisible to the "mic drop" sender.

Within a few hours of debuting the new feature, Google was inundated with complaints from users who claimed to have accidentally clicked the "mic drop" button, causing them to send the minion GIF in inappropriate circumstances and lose important email threads. The confusion partly stemmed from the fact that the mic drop button was in the usual place of the "send and archive" button, a regularly used feature by many users. By 4:00AM ET, Google had disabled the feature and apologized for the gag on their official blog.

Kayak's Arcade

Kayak.com

Today travel website Kayak.com has a special page where you can play classic arcade games like Frogger, Space Invaders, and Tetris while listening to 80s rock hits like "Eye of the Tiger" and "Danger Zone". Welcome back to 1983.

Pornhub Becomes "Cornhub"

Pornhub

Head over to Pornhub today to enjoy some hot, steamy, juicy... corn? Be forewarned that the corn gag only applies to the landing page and clicking anywhere else will take you back to their, uh, regular programming.

Tough Mudder Toys

For obstacle course fanatics who want a piece of the blood-pumping, adrenaline-running experience at home, Tough Mudder released this "Electroshock Therapy Toy". To be honest, this gag seems a little haphazardly thrown together, but E for effort.

Lexus V-LCRO Technololgy

The name Lexus goes hand in hand with luxury. You know, things like champagne, European watches, furs and... velcro? Lexus' April Fools' gag is pretty great if only because imagining a delusional rich guy who walks around with velcro on the back of his suit for the sake of his car is super hilarious.

Lyft Pranks Festus Ezeli

YouTube/Lyft

Lyft teamed up with Golden State Warriors' Andre Igoudala to trick his teammate Festus Ezeli into thinking he'd been cut from the team. A fake radio broadcast and coordinating with other members of the team getting them to corroborate the lie made for a pretty solid prank.

Jessica Lowndes And Jon Lovitz Relationship

Former 90210 remake star Jessica Lowndes pulled an early April Fools' joke on the internet when she flooded her Snapchat and Instagram with pictures of her canoodling with former SNL comedian Jon Lovitz. Racy pictures like the one below had people freaking out over the alleged couple's 31-year age difference. In the end, the whole thing turned to be a publicity stunt for Lowndes' new single "Deja Vu", which stars Lovitz as her unlikely romantic target.

Duolingo Pillow

Duolingo

Duolingo's gag is making language fluency even easier with the new "Duolingo Pillow" that teaches you while you sleep, At least it would save your neighbor's from having to hear you shout "Buenos dias!: into your phone like a crazy person.

The Return Of Calvin And Hobbes

Over at the Facebook page for Berkeley Breathed's Bloom County comic strip, Bill Waterson's beloved comic strip Calvin and Hobbes has returned — and is being immediately taken over by Breathed and exploited for every kind of merchandise under the sun.

March 11 — A big day for C&H fans: Bill Watterson and myself in Tuscany signing the franchise over to my "...

The whole thing is of course a big joke that references Waterson's well-known refusal to ever license the Calvin and Hobbes images for merchandise, but at least it looks like there really is a new comic strip from Waterson himself!